Expanations and Weddings (Part 4)

Previously: Expanations and Weddings (Part 3)
Expanations and Weddings (Part 2)
Expanations and Weddings (Part 1)

The big day arrived on Sunday. My girls and I headed over to Mary & Friends, a fantastic area salon where our officiant, Cary Neeley, cuts amazing hair. He cut my hair since high school and still does practically every woman in my family. He is amazing! I highly recommend him to do your hair and then marry you off.


They bought me food but I didn't really eat anything all day. The mimosas, though, they really helped out with the jitters!

While we were getting beautified, the men were off getting dressed and Beth, our Mayor of Dancing (her official title) gave haircuts to those who needed them.

The men were doing odd things with their shoes, mostly.


After we were all beautified, we headed back to my mom's to get dressed. I came downstairs and was very happy to be ready to go!


The pink background is the color of her dining room walls. Isn't that awesome?

It was about 900 degrees that day, so the precious little red jacket I had made to match my shoes didn't get worn at all. But, my feet were all swollen from the heat so the shoes didn't fit, so it didn't matter anyway!

(It was an awesome jacket.)

We then headed to the Indianapolis Art Museum to take photos. We considered this venue at first, but it was very much out of our budget. What I wanted the most was to capture the grounds in the fall, in the cool setting, so we got to do that for free!

We decided to do a "first look" photo since we were going to see each other before the wedding. When it was party time, we didn't want to be caught up in a million photos that would delay the dancing, so we got most of them out of the way before hand. Durwin and the men got there before we did, so I had to hide behind some bushes so he wouldn't see me before it was time. People kept walking by me hiding like a bridal ninja, and they wished me a confused "congratulations" before walking off. I liked to be the bride ninja.

The photographers positioned Durwin in front of the famous LOVE sculpture and I snuck up behind him. When we saw me for the first time, it was like magic.


It was definitely a very emotional moment as we realized that this was the day we would really be starting our lives together as a family. I'm actually really glad we got to capture and savor this moment. I didn't know it would be so great!


After I didn't have to hide in shrubbery anymore, we took some photos inside...





And we took some outside...

This has to be my favorite picture EVER.

I love our bridal party. They are really our closest friends, and such fun and creative people. It was the greatest to be surrounded by them that weekend. And I love that Joy chose to rock a tux. She looked hot! (I don't think I could have convinced my friend Evan to don a bridesmaids dress, though.)

Finally, it was time to head to the theater. I was getting more nervous by the minute. We piled back into the van and headed off to get married!

Expanations and Weddings (Part 3)

Previously: Explanations and Weddings (Part 2)
Explanations and Weddings (Part 1)

Fast forwarding to the actual weekend of the wedding!

The Friday before the wedding, we had our rehearsal and dinner. It was a little silly.

(The whole party, including our wonderful cat herder, I mean planner.)

We had the dinner at a great deli across from the theater that has sadly closed down since then. It was a great place to have it, casual and funky, not too expensive and accommodating to our large group. Man, I wish they were still around! It was a great low-key way to start off the weekend in earnest with our friends.

Saturday, my girls and I went to get our nails done. It was a welcome treat. I chose blue (for my something blue!).

(Clockwise from upper left: Joy Katkic, me, Janet Guertin, Katie Grantham,
TJ Rutherford, and Chava Light)

It was unexpectedly hot, reaching 90 degrees the day of the wedding. I had no flip flops, so I ended up buying the same silver shoes as Joy at the mall so I didn't ruin my pedicure. And it was a good thing, because the next day, my wonderful wedding shoes were too tight and so I ended up wearing the impulse silver sandals for the wedding!

(My toes matched Katie's!)

Saturday night, we started out with a dinner at Buca Di Beppo's (great for huge groups like ours) and then we went duckpin bowling at the restored 1950s alley in the basement of the theater (that theater has TWO duckpin alleys!).

Hot color combo! Drool.

There may have been moustaches. For the ladies.

(Pink ones!)

They may have all ended up on Durwin's head in a moustache mohawk.

(Yeah they did.)

After the bowling, the dudes and ladies split up and went our separate ways. We went back to my mom's house and I was surprised by my wonderful bridesmaid Janet with Team Guin t-shirts!

They each have the girl's color made of yarn and knitting needles, and
they say "Team Guin." She is so very talented and sweet!

My mom and TJ made a tower of cupcakes with this fantastic skeleton bride and groom on the top. So badass.

Halloweeeeen!

They threw me a surprise lingerie shower. I was definitely surprised, it was so unexpected, but really wonderful! We chatted and laughed for a while, and then I went to fold the escort cards and try to get some sleep before the big day.

(Oh, the men played board games and charades. Because they are secretly 12 years old. Nothing that couldn't have a photo on the internet, but I don't have any!)

Expanations and Weddings (Part 2)

Previously: Explanations and Wedding (Part 1)

Once we decided on the date, we had to choose a venue, and FAST. We knew that our date would fill up very quickly, and so we had to select one over the winter holidays. We chose Indianapolis as our location, because most of my family and a lot of our friends are there. It seemed relatively central to most people we knew. And there are some great places in this city to throw a shindig!

After looking at a few places, we decided on the Fountain Square Theater, a beautiful renovated 1920's theater that is now rented out for special events. I actually used to go there in high school and college to their Swing Dance Nights. I have many fond memories of that theater and eating sour cream fries at Peppy's afterward (not as much recommended). It was funky and fun, just what we wanted. And, being a renovated theater, we got to do this:


This was the theater marquee on the day of our wedding. It was so awesome to drive up and see it!

Our invitations were the next big hurdle to accomplish (of course, I bought a dress, chose bridesmaids, flowers, and all that other wedding stuff, but you came here to see the art!). I have to say it was the only thing we butted heads over throughout the wedding planning. We're both pretty particular, and we both had a set idea of our ideal. We eventually reached a compromise, and the set ended up looking fantastic.

The colors we decided on were red, deep purple, gold, and orange. Fall is our favorite time of year, and so we wanted lovely autumn colors on everything. (One bridal store I went into asked my colors as I tried on dresses, and then when I listed them, the woman turned to my mom and said "Well, looks like somebody hasn't decided yet!" Looks more like somebody didn't make a sale that day!) Everything, from the invitations to the flowers to the dresses, was an explosion of color.

For the invites, we wanted a long format, and so we designed them to fit in #10 envelopes, which we bought in our colors, and addressed with silver or gold pens. Paper Source was my best friend during this time, and later, Arvey Paper in Indianapolis. We used Overnight Prints for the printing and they were great.

We did a vellum overlay on top of the postcard with the design, and this is what we came up with:

(Click to embiggen)

I love how Durwin made a monkey look so graceful! Because in real life, I am not.

So, this is what you would see when you opened up your envelope:

(Click to embiggen)

We had orange bands on the real invites, with the leaf punch, but I think we ran out by the end.

The set:

(Click to embiggen)

There's a reply card (purple), a map to the theater and hotel information (red) and the invite itself. The most fun was the song request line we included on the reply card. Not everyone did it, but we got some really fun (and hilarious) song requests, which we tried to include in the playlist (which the DJ pretty much ignored, but that's for another day). We printed the invitation wording on laser-jet vellum and put it together with a silver grommet (if you do not have a crop-a-dile, or whatever those things are called, please go buy yourself one if you plan on doing anything of this quantity. 150 invites later and my hands would have been dead without it!). The leaf punch was an accident at first, but we liked how it looked, so we kept it.

And the invite itself up close:

(Click to embiggen)

I love how they turned out.

Expanations and Weddings (Part 1)

So, I said I would explain why we've been neglecting our poor corner of the internet for so long, and I shall! This year has been a crazy one. In fact, just this summer alone, we have traveled to 8 different cities in just over 2 months! I don't think we've stopped moving, prepping, or making huge life-changing steps once since this time last year.

The thing that was the most wonderful and probably the most time-sucking (yes, that includes my last year of grad school!) was our wedding. We got married in October, shortly after our huge move and starting new jobs. The experts (experts of...what?) say that you should only do one huge life-changing thing in a year, but we thought we'd take care of oh, FOUR of them in a few short months. No biggie.

So, I'm going to go through our huge, out-of-state, extremely fun and art-filled wedding in a series of blog posts. If you are exhausted by all things wedding, I promise we will get back to our regularly scheduled (well, sort of regular) programming afterward.

Our first large hurdle was to set a date. We picked 10.10.10 because, well, obviously it is the best possible date. Ever. We had no idea what life had in store for us when we picked it the winter before, but hey, who ever does? The second was to, of course, start drawing.

We're both illustrators, so there is no way we could pass up an opportunity to illustrate and design our own wedding invitations, save the dates, and anything else we could stick a drawing to. We're very much alike, we work together on most projects anyway, and we love the same things, so it should have been the easiest part, right? Well, we did butt heads over many elements, but considering what kind of pressure we were under (to pack up our whole lives and start them somewhere else!) I am shocked we didn't rip each others faces off. And I take it as an excellent sign that we didn't!

The first project we undertook was the save the dates. We mailed them out about 6 months before the wedding. Our nicknames for each other are monkey and panda (yup, this series is going to be full of gag-inducing cuteness, but it's a WEDDING SERIES so it's to be expected) and so we went with that as a loose theme. Here's the front:


Durwin had a much-beloved scooter in Savannah, and it was far too dinky for both of us to really ride it at once, so we got to do it on here instead! Like we usually do, it was a collaborative effort. The printed postcards had rounded corners and lots of info on the back. I definitely loved going to people's houses and seeing it up on their refrigerators. It set up the whole wedding as a fun party because really, it was not going to be a stodgy affair with us!

Comic Con!

Yes, yes, I know this blog has been woefully updated. It's been a busy, busy year for us, which we will go into detail very soon. BUT! If you want to catch up with Perpetual Flights, Durwin will be at the SDCC this week in Artist's Alley. Go by and say hi, and see all the great things we are doing right now! And stay tuned, more is to come soon...

Oops

It's been far too long since this blog was updated. Here it is, September, and the last post was in June. Yikes, guys.

We've been very busy over here at PFS, mostly with Big Life Stuff, but also with Big Art Stuff. We have finished all of the art for issue 1 of Beautiful Scars, which is very exciting. I am working on a surprise to be included in the issue as well (it's really great). Now that life has settled down a little, we can start working on issue 2. We will finish up posting the pages soon, so check back for those!

Life is great, if not very hectic right now. Take care!

Page 17 - Falling In Love

Ah... young love.

Top storyline: Ridley literally falls heads over heels (bum over noggin?) in love after seeing Emma for the first time. How else is he going to impress the girls? By falling out of a tree after being smitten?

Bottom storyline: The Princess is ripped out of the Young Woodsman's life. Being both brave and stalwart, he will face the danger to save his Princess--no matter the cost.

Over all, a real fun panel to put together.

Guin and I wanted to say thanks to all of the folks we saw over Heroes Con in Charlotte last weekend. We had a blast. A shout out to our booth mates: Bernie Wrightson, Dave Guertin and Greg Baldwin, Chris Moeller, John Van Fleet, Dave Dorman, Matt Wilson and the ever-moist Scott Hampton. It was three days of comics, nerdiness and overall FUN. We'll definitely give Heroes Con a go next year! A special thanks for all of the kind words of encouragement from those who perused Beautiful Scars--your positive mojo is crucial to getting this thing done! Until next page...